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The Echo Chamber

by John Boyne - £9.99  Transworld Publishers Ltd (2022)
paperback    ISBN 13: 9781529176742 | ISBN 10: 1529176743

'The funniest book I've read in ages. Savage but compelling' Ian Rankin
'A fearless romp with big laughs along the way' Graham Norton
'Funny, rumbustious, unstinting and wonderfully Hogarthian' The Observer
'His relish is infectious' Times
 
What a thing of wonder a mobile phone is. Six ounces of metal, glass and plastic, fashioned into a sleek, shiny, precious object. At once, a gateway to other worlds - and a treacherous weapon in the hands of the unwary, the unwitting, the inept.
 
The Cleverley family live a gilded life, little realising how precarious their privilege is, just one tweet away from disaster. George, the patriarch, is a stalwart of television interviewing, a 'national treasure' (his words), his wife Beverley, a celebrated novelist (although not as celebrated as she would like), and their children, Nelson, Elizabeth, Achilles, various degrees of catastrophe waiting to happen.
 
Together they will go on a journey of discovery through the Hogarthian jungle of the modern living where past presumptions count for nothing and carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant. Along the way they will learn how volatile, how outraged, how unforgiving the world can be when you step from the proscribed path.
 
Powered by John Boyne's characteristic humour and razor-sharp observation, The Echo Chamber is a satiric helter skelter, a dizzying downward spiral of action and consequence, poised somewhere between farce, absurdity and oblivion. To err is maybe to be human but to really foul things up you only need a phone.
 
'Sharp, funny, and beautifully written, but it's also a brilliant reflection on the landscape we now live in' Sunday Times bestselling author, Joanna Cannon

(Price & availability last checked: June 2022)